Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City is putting its own spin on the insurance industry trend of rewarding hospitals for finding ways to cut costs while improving health care.

Building on its success in improving coordination with individual doctors’ practices, the region’s largest insurer announced on April 5 a two-year partnership with Saint Luke’s Health System for what it is calling a collaborative value reimbursement program.

The insurer anticipates reducing costs about 5 percent per patient. The savings initially will be split between the insurer and hospital but ultimately could bring down insurance premiums.

“We couldn’t be happier than to have a partner like Saint Luke’s in moving forward with this type of arrangement,” BlueKC CEO David Gentile said. “Clearly, they are quality-driven and outcomes-oriented and therefore on the same page as to what this could really produce from a meaningful impact in the community in terms of savings and quality.”

BlueKC estimated that about 13,000 of its customers receive primary care from Saint Luke’s providers.

Insurers, spurred by the federal health care reform law and the need to rein in medical costs, are switching from reimbursing health care providers based on the procedures they perform to paying them for meeting quality benchmarks and doing so for less money.

The BlueKC-Saint Luke’s arrangement features more collaboration between the insurer and hospital physicians on case management through electronic claims data for each patient, which would include their past medical history and current prescriptions.

BlueKC also will reward medical practitioners for taking extra steps to improve the quality of care, such as by calling patients after they are discharged from the hospital to see whether they have any questions or new symptoms and to make sure they’ve had prescriptions filled or set up appointments with subsequent specialists or physical therapists.

In other cases, BlueKC will encourage doctors to shift office hours so they can treat patients who otherwise might end up at an emergency room for routine follow-up care.

“We don’t want to be in the managed-care ‘rap your knuckles’ decision-making,” Gentile said. “We want the physician to make those decisions. But we are arming them with the tool sets they need to be more prepared and manage in a more effective manner.”

BlueKC has provided similar services to physician practices since 2009 as part of getting doctors certified as Patient-Centered Medical Homes, a national model that envisions better coordination of care and helping patients stay healthy enough that they use fewer medical services. So far, 422 local practices treating 110,000 patients have achieved certification.

By moving the effort to hospitals, the teamwork now can involve specialists, radiologists, outpatient services and other partners to further improve patient results and reduce costs, Gentile said. He added that BlueKC is working on similar agreements with other local hospitals and health care groups.

“The ability to integrate health care services helps to reduce costs while creating better outcomes,” Robert Bonney, Saint Luke’s senior vice president of network operation and development, said in an emailed statement. “The physicians of Saint Luke’s Health System have embraced the patient-centered medical homes practice model and are energized by these new programs from BlueKC.”

Danette Wilson, group executive for external operations and BlueKC’s chief marketing executive, said that as coordinated care leads to fewer and cheaper claims, insurance premiums for individuals and group policies should decline or, at least, avoid the spikes of recent years.

“We understand that affordability is a key issue in the purchase of health care, and the cost of care is the main driver of that,” Wilson said. “We feel like this is a way to mitigate the increased costs over time.”

Dave Dillon, a spokesman for the Missouri Hospital Association, said that he is not aware of similar arrangements under way in the area but that most hospitals likely will be moving in this direction.

“Where hospitals can work with insurers to improve primary care, quality and efficiency, they will be natural partners,” Dillon said. “And while we are at the beginning of the transition to different models of care delivery, this type of alliance will likely be the standard model in the future.”